The Theatre Olympics 2023 is set to take place from April 1 to July 1 in Hungary and will mark a triple anniversary celebration. This year’s Olympics is the 10th edition and coincides with the 200th anniversary of the Hungarian poet, Imre Madách, and the 140th anniversary of his masterpiece, The Tragedy of Man.
The Tragedy of Man is a play that takes its characters, Adam and Eve, through history’s whirlwinds, utopias, and strokes of fate, with Lucifer as the leader of men, trying to kill faith in them. However, the light of faith and resistance to despair shines through, as reflected in the motto of the Theatre Olympics 2023: “O Man, strive on, strive on, have faith; and trust!”
The Olympics will host over 400 companies from 58 countries. Over 7,500 performers will be involved in 750 performances, making it potentially the largest theatre festival in the world.
Expansion of the boundaries
The festival’s centerpiece will be the 9th MITEM, a ‘festival within a festival.’ The MITEM has a unique program, with the author’s names: like Suzuki Tadashi, Theodoros Terzopoulos, Heiner Goebbels, Romeo Castellucci, Eugenio Barba, Alessandro Serra, Declan Donnellan, and more. The University of Theatre and Film Arts will offer a unique project that will allow participating institutions to present their versions of scenes from The Tragedy of Man.
The Theatre Olympics aims to promote multiculturalism, humanism, and social responsibility through theatre art. The festival aims to transcend its boundaries and absorb the achievements of different arts and disciplines, becoming an ‘assemblage point’ where different art forms meet.
A Space of Truth
The Theatre Olympics 2023 also features an installation by stage designer János Mira that uses archive material from the Hungarian Theatre Museum and Institute. The installation is a metaphorical tunnel with fifteen screens that immerse the audience in a space inspired by cinematic and theatrical versions of The Tragedy of Man.
The festival will conclude with Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Ivan Uryvskyi and featuring the cast of the National Theatre, Hungary. Other notable performances include The Trojan Women, Young Barbarians, Electra, Richard III, Othello, Macbeth, Caligula, Bros, War and Peace, and Everything that Happened and Would Happen.
